Anyone know if the eSATA side of things is like USB and is plug and play. This is for a non-RAID setup. I'll like to run Linux as a server where its primary duties would be to run services. Oee of which is SAMBA for file sharing. However, I like to have a set of eSATA disks that is serving unimportant media to be dynamically powered on and off - Most of this media is only required for certain parts of the day so has no need to sit there idle.

Any one tried something like this or know if eSATA can allow for this?

Have you tried power measurements on WHS v1 vs WHS Vail or another OS? Windows Server 2003 (WHS v1) has less power management support than 2008 (WHS Vail). I can't speak to the current Linux or *BSD systems though. When building my last server - I found that the idle was lower after Windows Server 2008 booted than it was in the BIOS. If you haven't tried Vail - it might be worth it to see if there's a noticable change in power consumption.

Regarding ECC:In the Core i3/5/7 lines - Intel is using this as a differentiating feature for Xeon processors, which rules out most lower end CPU's. I hope this changes in the future

AMD does not consider ECC a differentiating feature for the current CPU's - all of them support it. The only extra cost involved in using ECC for the motherboard manufacturer is some level of testing. Mushkin, Corsair, and Crucial are all validating ECC memory against Asus, Gigabyte, and other top tier brands.

Great article again !! Thank you !!On the "assembly and Modifications" page, the link to the sound recording of the before/after mods doesn't work. It takes you to an unknown page :( Here is the link that's in the article : http://www.silentpcreview.com/files/sou ... -damp1.mp3

Great article again !! Thank you !!On the "assembly and Modifications" page, the link to the sound recording of the before/after mods doesn't work. It takes you to an unknown page Here is the link that's in the article : http://www.silentpcreview.com/files/sou ... -damp1.mp3

First, thanks to Mike for posting this. My obnoxiously noisy QNAP NAS is running out of space, and I've wanted a quiet replacement. I will build one of these.

I'm way out of my depth, and someone mentioned this earlier in the thread, but isn't an easier solution to not having ECC memory going with something like the ZFS file system that has built-in scrubbing/checksum of the data? Seems that would take care of the rare data corruption problems when they pop up. That way, no need to compromise on any of the other system hardware requirements.

From reading up on this today, it seems that Nexenta has a turnkey NAS installation based on OpenSolaris and ZFS that appears to be free ("community edition"). The GUI looks pretty, anyway. I'd love to see a spin-off discussion of the best solution in terms of file system setup.http://www.nexentastor.org/projects/site/wiki/Tour

If you can assemble a PC from scratch, I don't see why it's any harder to go with a unix distro than Windows home server, as long as the hardware is compatible. I'm planning on installing squeezebox server and some similar apps, so a unix distro has always been a better choice for my personal situation.

[quote="Taxcheat"]If you can assemble a PC from scratch, I don't see why it's any harder to go with a unix distro than Windows home server, as long as the hardware is compatible.[/quote]It's not, it's just that some people don't know how to use a non-Windows OS.

Taxcheat writes "isn't an easier solution to not having ECC memory going with something like the ZFS file system that has built-in scrubbing/checksum of the data?"ZFS is a filesystem designed for systems which have ECC and are more reliable than your average PC in other ways as well. Last I heard, it was brittle and impossible to repair so people were loosing data. ECC was therefore recommended when choosing a box to run ZFS. But maybe ZFS's resiliency has improved.You can easily check your data without relying on any filesystem features if it's static (unlike a database or a project).

ak47 asked about hotplugging in Linux a while back. I don't do it so I was waiting for someone else to answer but, so far as I know and with ideal hardware, you can hotplug SATA and therefore eSATA. With less than ideal hardware, it might be dangerous even if you can do it. As far as I can see, USB drives behave much like SATA drives under Linux. Plug your drive and the device shows up as /dev/sd_, remove it and it goes away. You need to wait a few seconds however. Just don't forget to umount and to allow a few seconds to sync before disconnecting your drive. There are Linux incantations related to hotplugging but I don't know in what cases they're required nowadays. It probably depends on your hardware and firmware (see ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Software_status#Hotplug_support ). Some hardware just plain doesn't support it apparently.

Why not just whatever card you want, and an arctic cooling accelero S1, with the same Scythe fan?

There are limits to the amount of heat the case can dissipate with the fans set to 20 dBA/1m. Probably not higher than ~200W (DC), based on our experiments -- not all of which have been written about in the article. (ps -- this is a comment about a new section in the server build guide -- http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Ho ... ing_Server )

A multiport external eSATA enclosure such as the icydock seems like overkill when a single harddrive dock can be had from ~20-40 USD. Plus the individual drives are easier to store in something like a fireproof safe. Is there some benefit i'm not aware of when using the much more expensive external eSATA enclosure?

[quote="Ninjackn"]A multiport external eSATA enclosure such as the icydock seems like overkill when a single harddrive dock can be had from ~20-40 USD. Plus the individual drives are easier to store in something like a fireproof safe. Is there some benefit i'm not aware of when using the much more expensive external eSATA enclosure?[/quote]The lack of insane numbers of cables? There are exactly two going to my 4-bay enclosure.

Very interesting series of articles. Would be interested in seeing the gaming build with a GTX460 using the stock cooler - which is pretty damn quiet IMO - currently running an EVGA 768MB version in an SG01 myself.

[quote="Monkeh16"][quote="Ninjackn"]A multiport external eSATA enclosure such as the icydock seems like overkill when a single harddrive dock can be had from ~20-40 USD. Plus the individual drives are easier to store in something like a fireproof safe. Is there some benefit i'm not aware of when using the much more expensive external eSATA enclosure?[/quote]The lack of insane numbers of cables? There are exactly two going to my 4-bay enclosure.[/quote]

Cable management is a big plus.

The ability to use exactly ONE power supply for a 4-bay enclosure instead of 4 individual power bricks for the same capacity of single docks would be high on my list as well.

Of course, internal SATA backplanes could be used, but not in the PC-Q08 since they would require at least 2 x 5.25" bays available for 3 x 3.5" drives.

You could use the same external dock with any number of drives. That's not the issue.If you have an archive of sorts, single drives might be the way to go. The main reason being that you don't risk losing all your backups everytime you back up something. You should really be back up to several separate targets so that at least one is powered-off and secure at all times but that's probably not be an option for all your data if you have so many terabytes.The point of connecting many drives at once is that it allows you to backup more stuff than would fit on a single drive in one go. That's pointless for an archive where you can simply move on to the next backup drive when the first one is filled. But if you've got a lof of data that's not static (typically that happens at work but it could happen at home if you have way too many family movies and you often editing some and dumping others for instance), it might be more convenient to backup to a large array.

[quote="Taxcheat"]...I don't see why it's any harder to go with a unix distro than Windows home server...[/quote]

You're probably correct when considering only the server setup, but don't forget that WHS offers simple setup of additional features. Making, e.g., automatic backup of client PCs & remote-access configuration easy is a big plus for most end users. WHS isn't ideal for every role, of course, but it definitely has its place.

[quote="matt_garman"]I forget the exact numbers, but say 1 in X bytes. The point is, X hasn't increased proportionally with capacities, so the likelihood of bit errors has gone up. There's a few articles out there suggesting that RAID-5 is no longer sufficient given >1 TB hard drives. The gist is that the likelihood of a bit error is high enough that it could strike while you're rebuilding your array, for example, after replacing a failed drive. And then you're toast! (But as we all know, RAID is for high availability, not a substitute for backups, right? ;) )[/quote]

Another cheapo option would be to get this [URL=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128452]Gigabyte Atom D525 board[/URL] and add a [URL=http://www.buy.com/prod/startech-com-ide-to-sata-drive-motherboard-adapter-40-pin-idc-female/q/loc/101/209741556.html]Startech PATA to 2 SATA adapter[/URL] to give you a total of 6 SATA slots!

My takeaway from your link (I like Dansdata too) is that the alarmists have the math wrong, but that the denialists are just as wrong.

Quoting DansData: "Now, a RAID that’s 63.2% likely to have an error if one of its drives fails is still not a good thing. But there’s a big difference between 63.2% and “almost certain”. (Note also that we’re talking about a lot of data, here. At fifty megabytes per second, ten to the fourteen bits will take about 2.8 days to read.)"

The write hole and rebuild time are the bigger issues for me when it comes to raid 5 (or any distributed parity raid level) in the home. A lot of crap can happen when rebuild times are measured in days, not just read errors. System component failure? Get a BBU for your raid card. Power outage? Get a UPS. Extended power outage? Now you need standby generation. You kid dumps his drink into your server? ... Hope you have backups! Sure these problems affect non-raid systems as well, just to a much lesser extent because they're not as critically vulnerable during day-long rebuilds.

[quote="MikeC"][quote="Mr. Perfect"]Oh, and why is it only Mike's phpBB tags work? :([/quote]And a few others'.... dunno , mystery... looking in to that right now.[/quote]As I said before, looks like a permissions issue. I've only seen BBCode working in this section for admins and mods. In other sections, it works for everyone. Logical conclusion.

I have an 8 drive raid-5 software array. When I built the array, it took roughly 4 or 5 hours to build.That was with a phenom II 3 core 2.6 or 2.8ghz processor.Build times of days might be possible with a *really* slow processor, but pretty much impossible with modern processors.

[quote]If you can assemble a PC from scratch, I don't see why it's any harder to go with a unix distro than Windows home server, as long as the hardware is compatible.[/quote]And I don't see how there's any connection between the two at all. Just because I want to assemble my own PC, does not mean I have the time nor inclination to learn another operating system, especially when there exists one I already know how to use that does what I need it to do.

[quote="Taxcheat"]FWIW, I stumbled upon this NAS build that had quiet, lots of drives, and ECC ram as goals. Other than the $370 mobo/CPU combo, seems like you could go with most of the rest of the SPCR components. http://www.nerdblog.com/2009/04/good-en ... s-nas.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;[/quote]

Interesting build, but the motherboard is micro-ATX, not mini-ITX. You wouldn't be able to fix that into the Lian Li case in the SPCR build. Good luck to those trying to find an mITX with ECC support AND 6 SATA ports.

As mentioned by many others, RAID of any kind is no substitute for backups. Systematic frequent backups work as well for a failed drive, and provide more security overall by being separate from the source data. My guess is that in business servers, HDD failure occurs more frequently than in any home server, because the loads are way higher, 24/7. With a home server, 24/7 operation is much less common, as sleep mode works well with most hardware these days (finally). In the SPCR labs, in ~9 years, we have had 0 -- zero -- HDD failures in PCs that run mostly 24/7. We have seen a few dead HDDs, most often occurring within weeks of first receiving samples, but these invariably are never installed in a system and tend to get physical abuse from being bare naked kicking about the lab.

I've had four drive failures in the last few years. One was a Seagate SCSI drive that tended to fall off the bus once it got warmed up. Then it got worse and now can't even be found by the SCSI BIOS. The next was a 250 GB WD IDE drive that developed a bunch of unreadable sectors. Next was a Samsung HD501LJ that started developing unreadable sectors after a couple years of runtime. Samsung replaced it under warranty. The last was a 1.5TB WD GP drive that developed a problem with a rapidly increasing reallocated sector count after about six months. I need to RMA it one of these days.

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